


for want of a key

by Engineer104



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drama & Romance, Established Relationship, F/M, Felix hates everything except Annette, Fluff, Secret Relationship, lowkey enemies to lovers, playing fast and loose with fairy myths, there is background fae shenaniganry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29710488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: A servant to a Fae Queen that holds his true name, Felix cannot resist her commands.Even when she compels him to destroy the one good thing in his miserable captive life.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 9
Kudos: 33





	for want of a key

**Author's Note:**

> I probably oversimplified some fairy myths for the sake of this. did zero research. gave it some Tam Lin-ish zest. true name compulsion. the usual fae stuff. as they say *smacks roof* this teeny tiny one-shot can fit so much Felix melodrama.
> 
> enjoy!!! <3

Felix has always hated his lot in life. Profoundly, intensely _loathed_ the hand given to him.

He just doesn’t know who he hates more for it: his father, who would give up his son so easily for reasons unknown, or the Queen, who demanded him.

Well, he supposes he can’t truly blame his father for this last task she’s given him. More than often falls on the Queen, she who holds his true name and his life and his very soul between her hands, who commands where his sword must fall.

But for all he hates the Queen, for all he cannot disobey her no matter how hard he tries to stay his hand, for all this loathing for _her_ blackening his heart, he can never hate her as much as he hates himself in this moment.

Felix halts at the edge of the clearing where shadows still conceal him. His right hand - his sword hand - rests against a tree trunk, but he can’t help tightening it into a fist, can’t help the sick feeling rising in his stomach even before he sees her.

Any other time, the sight of Annette waiting for him brings a smile to his lips and a lightness to his chest like nothing else ever has - like nothing else ever will, but now…

_“Do it…”_ the Queen’s voice echoes through his head. _“I compel you, Felix Hugo Fraldarius.”_

(His name was never a greater curse to bear.)

Felix grits his teeth and steps out of the darkness, and it’s more than his own eagerness, more than his own desire to greet Annette, to listen to her chat and sing while he holds her, that forces him beyond the trees.

His feet sink into the soft grass while sunlight warms the top of his head. Fae magic pricks at his skin, a current of energy that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. But it’s what keeps this clearing and the surrounding forest safe from the Queen’s ilk, keeps it safe for her enemies, a place for him to escape her notice and her demands and steal a few moments in the sun with Annette.

But not today. He should’ve expected something like this, should’ve known better, should’ve kept his distance and stayed in the dark where he belongs.

Annette sits on a blanket in the middle of the clearing, a basket beside her and a book lying open in her lap. She nibbles idly on a biscuit while she reads, and a wide-brimmed hat shades her face from the sun. How absently she sits there, as lost to the world as ever with her head caught in her book, makes his breath catch in his throat.

He might choke on it, almost wishes he would so he can spare her.

Felix pauses a few paces behind her, his hands curling into fists at his sides before he closes one around the hilt of his sword. His heart thumps painfully in his ribs.

In the space that he hesitates to draw his blade, Annette’s face lifts. Her head turns, and when her eyes fall on him color fills her cheeks and a smile splits her face.

He doesn’t deserve that, doesn’t deserve the flutter in his chest anymore than he does her embrace when she shoots to her feet and flings her arms around his neck.

But his hand falls from his sword. With his heartbeat stuttering and her warm body flush against his, it drives the powerful, compelling voice of another from his mind. His arms wrap around her, pulling her as close as he can, so he buries his face in her hair and inhales the scent of crisp autumn apples and roses.

“You know it’s rude to stare?” Annette scolds him, though her grip on him doesn’t falter.

He winds his arms around her tighter, as if that will protect her, and grumbles, “I must’ve missed that lesson in etiquette.”

Annette laughs. Her fingers play with the hair at the nape of his neck, shooting warmth into his skin, and she pulls her head back just enough she can rest her forehead against his. “I missed you,” she tells him, her voice soft but no less melodic.

“We met two days ago,” he reminds her, though what he really means is, _I missed you too._

_(I_ _’ll miss you again soon.)_

“Still…” Her hand cups his cheek, her thumb skirting along his jaw and making him shiver despite the sun’s heat. “Two days is a long time to keep busy under my uncle’s roof, although his guests…did try to keep me occupied.”

“Long enough to write another song, I’m sure,” he teases her. He doesn’t know how he manages this, sounding so _normal_ despite what he must do before he leaves her again.

Annette rolls her eyes and pinches his earlobe. When he winces - though it doesn’t hurts - she lets go and says, “You would like that, wouldn’t you?” She slips out of his arms - leaving them hanging, leaving him wanting - and spins around before landing on her blanket. She pats the spot beside her. “I did make something for you, but I can’t say I have any new songs.”

Felix frowns - how can he still dare to feel any disappointment? - as he sits beside her. He rests his hands on his thighs, digging his fingernails into his flesh to resist the overpowering drive to reach for his sword. “What did you make?” he wonders.

Annette hums as she digs through her basket. “It’s nothing, well, it’s nothing fancy, but it is a pastry that I managed to make, and I…wanted you to try it.”

Felix raises an eyebrow at her. “You know I don’t care for sweets.”

“I didn’t say it’s a sweet pastry!” she retorts with a huff. At last she pulls out something wrapped in paper. “It’s, um…it’s filled with cheese, and I used a pinch of some spices that I’m not usually allowed to use because they’re so expensive, but”—she offered it to him—”I do hope you like it!”

Felix accepts the package from her and lifts the paper. As promised, a shapeless lump of soft flaky dough sits in his hands, and when he tries it…he finds he likes it, the cheese and dough savory rather than sweet, the spices apparent without being too weak or overpowering.

“It’s, um, it’s good,” he tells her as he swallows the last bite.

Annette beams. “Oh, good, because that dough was really…tricky to make,” she admits. “The cook was worried I’d waste all the flour trying to get it right.”

He offers her a smile, and any reason he has to be here except to see her flees his mind. “Thank you, Annette.”

Her smile turns sheepish, almost shy, and color rises to her cheeks. “It’s not—it’s not much, really!” she insists. She wraps her arms around her legs and rests her chin on her knees. “I’m still…well, I could be doing more for you, like finding a way to free you, but…”

When Annette’s face falls, Felix’s chest tightens. The pastry she made him no longer sits well in his stomach. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and tugs her closer until her limbs unravel and she falls against him with a slight _oof_.

“It’s—it’s fine,” he lies.

Annette obviously doesn’t believe him judging by how her lips twist into a frown. “Felix…”

“What?”

She rests her head on his shoulder while her hand finds his. Their fingers tangle, and their legs, and before he knows it they’re lying down on the blanket and he has to close his eyes to shield them from the sun.

Annette’s a warmer presence at his side until she props herself up on her elbow and stares down at him. He clutches her other hand in both of his to occupy him, to delay the inevitable. “My uncle is…arranging a marriage for me,” she confesses in a low voice.

It startles Felix how much those words hurt. “O-oh?” he says, because he isn’t sure what else to say except, _Don_ _’t._

(She won’t.)

Annette nods, a furrow in her brow he longs to wipe away, if only he knows how. “It’s to a young nobleman from the Empire,” she explains. “He’s their highest ranking general’s son.”

Though he doesn’t know a name, Felix thinks he might hate this man already.

(Still not as much as he hates himself.)

“And if I marry him,” she continues, her fingers tightening around his, “I’ll have to leave here…”

“Then don’t,” Felix bursts at last. He sits up so suddenly Annette tumbles away from him, but when she pushes herself up beside him his hands find her shoulders and, with an unfamiliar urgency driving him (because what does it matter?), says, “Don’t agree to it.”

Annette smiles, though her eyes shine with unshed tears. “I’m not sure I have a choice,” she admits. “My uncle thinks it’s either I marry an Empire noble or they invade our lands.”

“Maybe your uncle is wrong,” Felix insists.

She shakes her head. “I don’t think he is,” she says. “Their armies have been nosing around our lands for years, and the regent hasn’t answered our pleas for help for whatever reason.” Her lips twist into an uncharacteristic scowl, and Felix is reminded that maybe there are others he hates too.

“I…I wish…” but he trails off, unsure what he wishes. What use is wishing if he can’t get what he wants from it?

(What use is his strength if he can’t even protect Annette?)

“I wish we could marry,” Annette says almost bitterly, something she might normally say wistfully. Her forehead falls against his collarbone, her trembling reverberating in his chest. “I hate your—your Queen!”

“I hate her too,” Felix says. He wonders if Annette can feel how his heart races, how his blood boils with his own anger and frustration at everything.

How even now he reaches for his sword.

His lips seem to shape his next words of their own accord:

“I-I might know a way for you to—to not marry him,” he tells her. His stomach turns with an awful nausea as instead he finds the knife sheathed in his boot.

“What?” Annette lifts her head to stare at him, her eyes wide and desperate, her fingers bunching in his shirt. “Tell me, Felix.”

This time Felix can’t bring himself to meet her gaze as he unsheathes the knife. His heart threatens to burst from his chest, and he mumbles, “Annette.”

“What?” Her blue eyes…so wide in alarm, still captivate him. “Felix, you’re worrying me. What’s going on in your head?”

_“I suppose then I must remind you,” sneered the Queen, “whose ‘captive’ you are.”_

He can’t help himself. He can’t help trailing a finger down her face from her hairline to her jaw, can’t help tilting her chin up before sealing his lips over hers and taking her warmth for himself. Maybe he’s always been as selfish at his core as he is hateful.

Felix clutches the back of her head as he kisses her, holds her as closely as he can while her grip tightens on his shirt. Annette sighs into his lips, the tension bleeding from her body.

Just as her life must bleed from it.

Their noses brush when they slowly pull apart, the heaviness of their breaths filling the space and the silence between them. He watches Annette’s eyes flutter open, his own gaze then lingering on her damp lips.

“I’m your captive,” he whispers, softer than any confession.

And then he knows what she must do, what she _can_ do. It hits him with the force of a river; caught in a current, swept up in the flow of his own thoughts.

When Annette flushes, he says, “Annette…take my name.”

“W-what?” Confusion laces her face. “I don’t understand. Your name?”

“What is it?” he presses. His grip on the knife tightens, and it’s all he can do to stay his hand. “Tell me.”

“Felix,” she says, blinking at him. “Your name is Felix.”

He shakes his head. Annette, somehow, still hasn’t seen the knife. “My full name,” he insists. “My true name. Tell me to _stop_.”

Her eyes threaten to bulge from her skull. “A-are you—”

“ _Tell me_.”

“F-Felix Hugo Fraldarius,” Annette says in a rush, “stop! But why did you want…?”

The knife slips from his fingers, and he has no desire to pick it up again, no voice in his head demanding, compelling, _enslaving_ him to her will. It lands in the grass, a dark sliver of steel - as deadly to mortals as it is to Fae.

Felix knows which he would rather kill, but not now, not yet, not with a weight newly lifted from his chest.

At last Annette’s eyes find the knife; they grow wide as plates. “Felix, what’s going on?” she demands.

“I’m no longer hers to compel,” he says. His whole body sags with relief, and a smile - for once - pushes at his lips. His gaze snaps to Annette, who glances from the knife to him. “I don’t have to—she can’t make me hurt you.”

Her jaw drops, her hand rising to cover her mouth. “O-oh,” she says. “ _Oh_.”

Her shock, somehow, tempers his joy at finding himself free. He flinches and waits for her to spit venom at him, or even to run away. He deserves it, he thinks, even just for daring to draw his knife, for thinking he can live with her blood on his hands.

But then her arms fly around his neck. She shakes, and a sob escapes her. “ _Felix._ ”

Felix crushes her against him. “I’m free,” he tells her; perhaps the more he says it, the sooner he’ll believe it. When she draws back from him, tears in her eyes and a radiant smile on her face, his heart skips a beat. “I’m free, Annette. I’m—”

Annette kisses him, then pulls away just enough to mumble against his mouth, “I love you.”

“And I you,” he murmurs before his lips again find hers.

**Author's Note:**

> i literally forgot to post this fic way back during Fantastical Felannie Week, which means i can't remember what i used for the title or summary. oh well! bonus fic months later, and i can't complain because there's something nice about having a whole (tiny) one-shot in my back pocket for whenever. might do something else with this concept too, maybe if i need a break from my giant WIP
> 
> that said, i hope you enjoyed it and let me know what you thought! ~~even if it's like...almost a year late. time isn't real~~


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